Given the terrifying unraveling of events in our world recently, it’s not surprising that many of my clients have spent a portion of their sessions talking about their fear, sadness, powerlessness, and hopelessness. As my clients, course members, and readers are highly sensitive people (possible even highly HIGHLY sensitive), when the world seems like it’s falling apart, they’re going to feel it in the deepest folds of their hearts. How can people commit such atrocities, they ask with tears in their eyes?

I don’t have the answers. I can’t even hypothesize about how the world has devolved to this state. The underlying reasons are complex and multi-layered, and must draw on every facet of our internal and external realms: psychology, spirituality, sociology, economics, politics, ecology, religion. We desperately want to understand this so that we can fix it, and address it we must. But as that’s not my area of … Click here to continue reading...

There’s a vulnerability on the planet during the holiday season. I see it in people’s faces: beneath the stress and tightness and frantic pace lives the softness of an open heart, as if the emissaries of grief travel from broken heart to eyes and softening the edges. I see the longing for connection, the most basic human desire to break through our isolation and sit comfortably in others’ company. I see the desire for peace. I see the longing for love.

It happens in small moments as I walk through my day. I catch the eyes of a driver in the parking lot and smile. She smiles back. A meeting of strangers. I drive out of the parking lot and wave at the homeless man on the corner. “Can we give him anything, mommy?” my son asks. I know I don’t have any small … Click here to continue reading...